


Angering for Life

by kitestringer



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-25
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestringer/pseuds/kitestringer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius and Buckbeak are gone; Remus looks at what's left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angering for Life

**Author's Note:**

> Implied Remus/Sirius; takes place sometime during _Half-Blood Prince;_ makes reference to events and details from _Order of the Phoenix._ The title is from a [poem](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16515) by Wallace Stevens.
> 
> Originally posted in April 2007 in the Wellymuck LJ community. Inspired by [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/wellymuck/91980.html).

There's a room in number twelve, Grimmauld Place, where footsteps are muffled by dusky feathers lining the floor, and the animal smell is so pungent you have to blink away tears; where once you had to bow as you entered and always tread very carefully, but now you merely cast a glance towards the chest of drawers where a Boggart's taken up residence. You ought to get rid of the damn thing, you know, but you won't, because you also know you couldn't bear the silence.

You let the Boggart rattle away as you crouch in the corner where Sirius used to sit slumped against the wall, where you would find him after you'd been gone for days and when no one had seen him at breakfast or lunch or tea, and he'd smile, really smile, when he saw your face, a smile that dissolved so quickly that trying to picture it only a few seconds later was like groping for something you'd dreamt. Here, where he sat long and untold hours talking only to things that couldn't understand or judge — Buckbeak, a painting of his brother as a child, an empty mirror that fit in the palm of his hand — and sometimes he wouldn't stop even when you came in, even when you knelt beside him and touched his arm, his cheek.

'I need to get out of here,' he said into the distance, and where 'here' was and to whom he was speaking wasn't entirely clear, and you were afraid to ask.

Now you crouch in the corner and run your fingers over what remains, the scores he burned into the wall with his wand — neat, parallel lines that at first marked the passing of each day and then proliferated to mark other ways in which his life was escaping him. You know, because one day there were five more scores than the day before, and he said 'Five places I wanted to go but couldn't,' and looked up and smiled and said, 'it's worse than five days passing.' And all you wanted to do then was take his hand and Apparate with him, just anywhere, to see him turn his face up into the sun and his eyes lit by it, and you nearly raised your wand and did it. But a soft knock on the door startled you both, and Harry's pale face peering into the room tugged Sirius to his feet in an instant, and then he was gone.

Gone.

If you close your eyes, you can see a blue sky so bright and so sharp it hurts, and his eyes are nearly translucent beneath it and you can't, don't want to, look away, so you squint stupidly against the sunlight and ignore the bead of sweat crawling down your neck and hope he'll ignore it, too, as he leans close and touches your lips with his. When you open your eyes, you see a grey room and dirty feathers stuck to your shoes and how alone you are, and you draw your wand and etch an unsteady line in the wall.


End file.
